The Female Spectator
CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY VOL.17 No.1, Winter 2013 ISSN1746-8604 CHAWTON CHRONICLES: A LETTER FROM THE CEO
2013 is off to a flying start! At the time of writing, plays a critical part in the instigation and delivery with snow lying across the estate and gardens, the of the broad-based academic programme at the house is being geared up for an intensive period Library – this includes the regular evening lecture of filming with independent production group, programme, our conference activities, and of Optomen. The company has been commissioned course our increasingly popular visiting fellowship to deliver an authentic recreation of Jane Austen’s scheme. All of this will continue in Gillian’s Netherfield Ball for the BBC. With a hundred actors absence – and she will be returning for our July 4th- on site, a double decker catering bus, filming 6th academic conference, as she explains in her from early in the morning until midnight and the own article in this issue. I am extremely grateful Stables set up as a Green Room, going to work to colleagues at the University of Southampton entails, quite literally, walking on to a film set. Our for enabling Professor Stephen Bygrave to cover colleagues Professor Jeanice Brooks and Dr Wiebke some aspects of Gillian’s job for much of this year. Thormalen at the University of Southampton are Stephen has published widely on Romantic poetry; just two of the specialists ensuring the authenticity the Enlightenment; rhetoric; and the history of of the music, with reference to the Austen family education. Stephen is well known to us all at music books. BBC2 will screen the programme in CHL as, among other things, Series Editor (with April. Entitled Pride and Prejudice: Having a Ball Dr Stephen Bending) for the Pickering and Chatto at Easter, it will be fronted by Amanda Vickery Chawton House Library series. and Alastair Sooke. To coincide with this, we Looking ahead to the are planning to put on Spring, we are delighted a private viewing in the to be involved with Great Hall along with a a ground-breaking range of presentations theatrical event in – details will be on our the US: the world website over the next premier of ‘Sense & couple of months. Sensibility The Musical’ at the Denver Center In my pre-Christmas Theater Company. message I highlighted The connection with that this year is a this production was very important one established by the Chair for Chawton House of our North American Library. We are A Ball at Chawton House Library Friends, Professor Joan celebrating ten years Ray. I am really looking since our formal forward to attending opening in July 2003, and also contributing to the the first night, and we are fortunate enough to be widespread recognition of the 200th anniversary receiving a donation from that evening’s receipts of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. We also courtesy of the organisers and the regional JASNA plan to build on the many successes achieved in groups. In support of the venture, CHL is providing 2012 – including continuation of our fundraising material for a month-long exhibition which will look and promotional campaigns. at the influence of earlier women writers on the writing of Jane Austen. There will be a full report Of course, any activities at CHL – whether they on the premiere in the next edition of TFS. This involve outside bodies or are self-generated – require will be later than normal as we will be producing the dedicated support of staff and volunteers. I am a bumper celebratory volume to coincide with the grateful to every one of them, particularly as there tenth anniversary of the Library in July / August. is an increasing demand on their time and skills. In the meantime, keep following us on Facebook, It is not possible to mention them all by name but Twitter and at www.chawtonhouse.org I would like to wish our Director of Research, Dr Gillian Dow, all the best for her maternity leave Enjoy the rest of this edition. which will start at the end of February. Gillian Stephen Lawrence Ian Beveridge – The Female Spectator Volunteer Volunteer Winter 2013 Co-ordinator
Of all job titles, that of Volunteer Volunteer Co- Editors: ordinator is probably more descriptive than most, Academic: Gillian Dow although spell-checker always prompts me to delete the repeated word. General: Sandy White I began volunteering at Chawton House Library in 2009 when I learned that there was a recruitment drive for volunteers which included House Guides; Chawton Chronicles – a Letter from 1 being an Alton Town Guide, I felt that I had something the CEO to offer. Following an intense three-month learning period culminating in the dreaded ‘dummy’ house Stephen Lawrence tour with Sarah Parry, I was proud to join the band of dedicated and knowledgeable volunteer house Faces of Chawton 2 guides. Not long afterwards, I offered my services to Ian Beveridge, Volunteer Coordinator organise the volunteers for the open tours and events. Now word travels very fast indeed, and arriving at a Sandford Award 3 volunteers’ coffee morning soon after, I was greeted with hearty congratulations on my new role. It then Sarah Parry, Archive and Education dawned on me that this role was going to be a bit Officer more challenging than I first thought.
The Academic Programme; and an 3 Although I am retired, any people skills that I practised ‘Au Revoir’ when I was employed are very much needed in this role. There are currently about 70 volunteers who Gillian Dow, Chawton House Library give up their time freely and I have had to learn not and the University of Southampton only their names, but what their preferred duties are when they offer to help at events. And I am still The Hammond Collection 4 learning. Laura O’Keefe, Head of Cataloging and There is quite a range of commitment levels. Some Special Collections, New York Society volunteers regularly help in the library or assist with Library the conservation programme, as well as helping at events and the house tours, whereas some are just Ten Years and Counting: Can We Count 5 happy to volunteer a couple of times a year and I am On Your Support? happy with that too. Many of the volunteers have told Eleanor Marsden, Director of me that volunteering at Chawton House Library feels Development very special and I would agree with them. So spell-checker – you are wrong! Do not delete that Shaping A Legacy: Alicia Lefanu’s 6 second ‘volunteer’ as volunteering is very rewarding Memoirs of the Life and Writings of and provides an invaluable benefit to society as a Mrs. Frances Sheridan whole. Marilyn Francus, West Virginia University
Happy Endings, or, The Importance of 8 First Editions Gemma Betros, Australian National University
Elizabeth Hartley and The Fall Of 10 Rosamond at Chawton House Library Alicia Kerfoot, The College at Brockport, State University of New York
Dates for your diary 12
Ian Beveridge
2 The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 SANDFORD AWARD
By Sarah Parry, Archive and Education Officer an introductory talk about Jane Austen before spending time at both houses learning about the In 2007 Chawton House Library and the Jane context of her life and work. When groups visit Austen House Museum jointly received a Sandford Chawton House Library they have an opportunity Award in recognition of our education work. to visit one of the library reading rooms and view Sandford Awards are made annually to historic sites material from the collection which relates directly which offer educational programmes to schools. to the novel they are studying. Being able to To ensure high standards the award is valid for five read a little of Fordyce’s years, sites must then Sermons, for example, be re-assessed. As the always provokes a spirited educational programmes discussion! The visits at both sites had grown conclude with a dancing since 2007 we decided session in replica costume. to apply for the award individually when our Chawton House Library re-assessment became also offers visits to due in 2012. Following university groups and a full day of judging we school groups wishing were delighted that both to explore the library, organisations received house and landscape of awards. the gardens and estate. Please contact Sarah Jane Austen themed Parry (sarah.parry@ school visits are run in chawton.net) for further partnership between Sarah Parry, the Duchess of Marlborough and Pat Lyons [CHL information or to discuss our sites. At the Volunteer]. The Awards were presented by the Duchess of your requirements. Museum, students have Marlborough at Blenheim Palace in November.
THE ACADEMIC PROGRAMME; AND AN ‘AU REVOIR’
Gillian Dow, Chawton House Library and research has changed dramatically in the past University of Southampton decade: many women writers who were marginal in 2003 are now much less so, digitization projects I arrived at the University of Southampton and have changed how we access their writings, and, CHL in September 2005, excited about being from my own perspective, transnational approaches part of a new research institution with so much to British women writers – via translation studies potential to facilitate research on women writers – have a lot to offer in terms of reevaluating the of the long eighteenth century. I look back on the literary marketplace of the period 1680-1830. past seven years with considerable pride at what We are now in the difficult position of having to we have achieved. The Novels-On-line project select papers for presentation, with the certain and the author biographies projects – well under knowledge that this will be a landmark event. Do way on my arrival – are still going strong. See our look out for the final conference programme on website for the recently added novel The Imposters the Southampton Centre for Eighteenth-Century Detected: or, the life of a Portuguese (1760) and for Studies (SCECS) website. Daniel R. Mangiavellano’s online biography of the Scottish playwright and poet Joanna Baillie (1762- Our visiting fellowship programme goes from 1851). Our evening lecture programme, study- strength to strength. The new call for applications days, academic workshops, network meetings for the 2013-2014 academic year can be found and large-scale conferences have a high profile here: www.southampton.ac.uk/scecs/research/ internationally. chawton_fellowships.html Speaking of conferences, in this, our ten-year Do remember that these fellowships are hosted anniversary year, we are delighted to be hosting jointly by the Faculty of Humanities at the the conference ‘Pride and Prejudices: Women’s University of Southampton and by Chawton Writing of the long Eighteenth Century’, 4-6 July. House Library. Successful applicants have library When Jennie Batchelor (University of Kent) and I rights at the University, and become members, approached a range of scholars to host panels and during their stay, of SCECS. Scholars in SCECS roundtables, we had no idea how much interest are always delighted to talk to potential applicants this conference would attract. The landscape of about their projects. And this is an appropriate
The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 3 place to congratulate my colleague Professor Finally, as Steve Lawrence announced in his article, Emma Clery, Director of SCECS, on her success I will be taking a very different kind of leave from in the Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship end-February. My colleague Professor Stephen Scheme. This funds 3 years of research leave for Bygrave will take up the academic reins at CHL, Emma, for a project entitled ‘Romantic Women and will be in touch in the next, bumper, issue of Writers and the Question of Economic Progress’. The Female Spectator. In the meantime, this is an We all look forward to hearing the results of her ‘au revoir’, as the French side of my family would research – which Emma will disseminate in part say, not an ‘adieu’. I hope to be fully back on board via a monthly blog – and to corresponding events, in 2014, as we look forward to the next decade of including a conference and an exhibition, at CHL. research and activity at CHL.
THE HAMMOND COLLECTION
By Laura O’Keefe, Head of Cataloging and more than a hundred titles. The collection contains Special Collections, New York Society Library many Gothic novels, well over three hundred, with such appealing titles as Veronica, or, The The New York Society Library, a membership Mysterious Stranger; The Enchanted Mirror: a library in New York City, has completed the online Moorish Romance; and The Three Monks!!! Both cataloging of its Hammond Collection, 1,152 works genres can be found through subject searches under of fiction, drama, and other popular reading matter ‘epistolary novels’ and ‘Gothic novels.’ from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The numerous romantic and Gothic About 170 works are from William Lane and the titles among them indicate that these volumes Minerva Press, including several that are not in enjoyed a mostly female reading audience; the fact Dorothy Blakey’s bibliography. Dramatic works in that many of them were also written by women the Hammond Collection range from musical farces may make them of particular interest to readers to melodramas and tragedies. Elizabeth Inchbald of The Female Spectator. The catalog records for and Joanna Baillie are among the playwrights, as them are viewable as a group with an author search are George Colman, Thomas Dibdin, and John for ‘James Hammond’s Circulating Library’ at: O’Keeffe. http://library.nysoclib.org/ Though the Hammond The collection was originally Collection consists almost part of the James Hammond entirely of fiction and plays, Circulating Library, which the it also includes a handful of nineteenth-century merchant religious and inspirational James Henry Hammond writings, some travel narratives, operated out of his general and biographies and memoirs. store in Newport, Rhode Island. Among the latter are one by the According to the bookplates actress George Anne Bellamy found within the volumes, (An Apology for the Life of George Hammond’s was the largest Anne Bellamy, Late of Covent- circulating library in New Garden Theatre / written by England, with ‘novels, tales, and herself ; to which is annexed her romances’ comprising most of original letter to John Calcraft, its holdings. Several years after Frontispiece and title page for an early American Esq. advertised to be published Hammond’s death in 1864, his edition of Mme. Sophie Cottin’s Elizabeth, or, The in October 1767, but which collection was dispersed. About Exiles of Siberia was then violently suppressed) two-thirds of the Hammond (London: J. Bell, 1785). Library books came to the New York Society Library; regrettably, we do not know what became One of the more exciting and unexpected results of the remainder of them. of this cataloging project was the discovery of about eight titles for which we seem to have the Hammond items at the Society Library were only known extant copy: The History of Henrietta published between 1720 and 1854, with the bulk of Mortimer (London: Thomas Hookham, 1787); The them dating from 1770 to 1825. Well-known writers Countess of Hennebon (London: William Lane, include Mme. de Genlis, August von Kotzebue, Anna 1789); Tamary Hurrell’s Tales of Imagination Maria Porter, and Mary Robinson. There is even a (London: J. Walter, 1790); Castle Zittaw (London: copy of the first American edition of Jane Austen’s William Lane, 1794); Souza-Botelho’s Emilia and Emma, although it is in very poor condition. Alphonso (London: R. Dutton, 1799); Sophia That favourite eighteenth-century literary genre, Fortnum’s The Victim of Friendship (London: R. epistolary fiction, is well represented here, with Dutton, 1801); A. Lafontaine’s Herman and Emilia
4 The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 (London: Lane, Newman, 1805); and The Cottage are available to members and non-members alike, and Girl (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1814) we welcome inquiries from prospective researchers. Our full address and contact information are: Founded in 1754, the New York Society Library The New York Society Library, 53 East 79th Street, is the oldest library in New York City, located New York, N.Y. 10075, Phone: 212-288-6900, x240 on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. While we are a or x242. Email: [email protected] membership library, our special collections materials
TEN YEARS AND COUNTING: CAN WE COUNT ON YOUR SUPPORT?
By Eleanor Marsden, Director of Development Those individuals whom we have sought to bring on-board as partners include you. You have Ten of something can mean many different personally made a contribution to the survival of things. Jane Austen pays ten shillings for a copy the charity over the past decade – and I want to of Dodsley’s Poems, whilst a Mr Maitland’s ten thank you for that, on behalf of everybody here at children dissuade her from ‘setting her black cap’ the Library, past and present. However large or at him. Austen’s creation Catherine Morland is small your contributions, whatever format these one of ten siblings, whilst put-upon Fanny Price take, we are nothing without you, our supporters. is chided that she may never meet a man with Numbers matter, and each one of you adds to a even a tenth of Henry Crawford’s ‘merits’. Ten- group which gives life to what we do. Thank you to-one are the odds given by Fanny Ferrars that for believing in what can be achieved here. It is so the Dashwood girls won’t need Robert’s money, important that the Library continues to exist and and ten minutes was the time spent by Mr Bingley flourish, building its noteworthy collections and visiting Mr Bennet’s library. maintaining their precious setting. We all believe Hopefully, through a personal visit to the collection that – and now we need to both celebrate the past or via our online collections and podcasts, you will decade, and look ahead to the new opportunities have directly or indirectly spent much more than around the corner. ten minutes with us at Chawton House Library! There’s no need for a mathematician to explain The number ten is, of course, now a momentous that things are tight these days. For a charity like one for us, and significant in its link with Jane Chawton House Library, we have come a long way Austen, with 2013 being our tenth anniversary – but we still need to increase our level of support which we share with the bicentennial celebrations to enable us to thrive, particularly now, when the of Pride and Prejudice. Ten years: a decade Arts are being badly hit by the economic climate. of working with academics, scholars, the local Many of you have donated to our Christmas appeal, community and visitors from all walks of life. We which has helped us to raise awareness of the now have many hundreds of Friends around the continuing need for maintaining levels of support, world, and over a thousand followers on Facebook; and for which we are incredibly grateful. If you over ten-thousand visitors now pass through our have not yet made a donation to our annual fund, doors each year, and we are creeping up to nearly please consider doing so over the next couple of half a million hits on the new website per month. months. An extra donation here and there, no Numbers matter. matter how many digits in the number, does make Our natural focus is the written word, and yet a difference. Donations can be made to both CHL figures are important too. In ten years, we have and our North American Friends counterpart built up not only an ever-increasing reputation, online at www.chawtonhouse.org. Click on ‘Get but we have also engaged many established and Involved’ to learn more. new minds with the possibilities inherent in the A decade of success deserves to be celebrated, and study of all that Chawton House Library has to celebrate we will, with some fantastic events and offer. Our remit is to exist for public benefit, which a number of exclusive opportunities. I was lucky means that we continually strive to put in place enough to be one of the first post-graduates to new initiatives, ideas, resources, and programmes, study in the Library, and have followed its progress so that as many people as possible can benefit as a subsequent visitor and member of staff. It is from the fabulous resources which we safeguard. a pleasure to be involved with an organisation that The past decade has produced many flourishing has such drive and constant potential, and there partnerships between the Library and individuals, are many exciting possibilities on the horizon. But other organisations, trusts, corporates and the for now, take pleasure in the knowledge that you media, to name but a few. These relationships have helped us to make it to this point. The fact of have been and will continue to be the bedrock of the matter is: you count. all that we can do, going forward.
The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 5 SHAPING A LEGACY: ALICIA LEFANU’S MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MRS. FRANCES SHERIDAN
By Marilyn Francus, West Virginia University, a employments of Mrs. Sheridan….’ (108) After Visiting Fellow in May 2012. Chapter IX (in which Frances Sheridan dies), the last two chapters of The Memoirs are dedicated My work on Frances Sheridan (1724-1766) is to defending the Sheridan men, and their lives part of a project on the impact of motherhood after Frances’s death. Frances is mentioned on the on professional women writers. Sheridan was last two pages (434-35), but she drops out of the a literary comet in the middle of the eighteenth narrative altogether after page 311. In essence, century: in her six-year professional career, she Frances disappears from nearly a third of her wrote a blockbuster novel (The Memoirs of Sidney biography. Biddulph), a hit play (The Discovery), and an oriental tale (Nourjahad) that had an afterlife as a The Memoirs reveals itself as a project to shape the play and a children’s story well into the nineteenth family legacy, its ambition extending far beyond century. I was intrigued: how did Sheridan pursue the recuperation of Frances Sheridan’s life. Yet such a successful career while being the mother of while Lefanu’s sustained defences of the Sheridan four children? men displace Frances Sheridan, they also position her as the unassailable Sheridan, the one who can I turned to the standard (and to date, only) raise the reputations of all Sheridans, particularly biography of Frances Sheridan, Memoirs of the Life the male ones who have a pesky tendency to attract and Writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan (1824) criticism. In The Memoirs, Frances Sheridan written by her granddaughter, Alicia Lefanu. The is presented as a model of female virtue and title page signals that the professional and the domesticity. Based on available correspondence, familial coexist uneasily here: while this biography Frances was a devoted wife—rejoicing in her is invested in memorializing Frances Sheridan, husband’s successes, and uncomplaining about his her famous son, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the failures and the considerable debt that accumulated playwright, orator, and politician (1751-1816), as a result. She was a loving mother, who enjoyed appears on the title page twice. His name appears being with her children and educating them. before the titles of Frances Sheridan’s works, Her contemporaries esteemed her as a gracious signalling that her status as a parent is more hostess and a good friend, and she won the respect important than her authorship—and if that point and admiration of cultural luminaries like Samuel needed emphasis, Richard Brinsley’s name is Johnson and Samuel Richardson. printed in a larger font. His name appears later on the title page (in an even larger font) to announce Yet Lefanu’s depiction of her grandmother’s that The Memoirs includes remarks on a recent character complicates the understanding of her biography about him. The frontispiece echoes the career. Lefanu suggests that Frances Sheridan only title page, for there too Richard Brinsley’s name began writing out of financial need, as befitting a appears under Frances Sheridan’s portrait, in a modest, domestic woman: larger font than the titles of his mother’s works. ‘While fortune smiled, Mrs. Sheridan had felt no While this could be simply a matter of marketing, inclination to court the favour of the public as a the title page and frontispiece prefigure the writer, and cheerfully sacrificed the gratification frequent displacement of Frances Sheridan from of vanity, which she might have obtained as the her own biography. As it turns out, there are possessor of distinguished talents, to the duties two rivals for centre stage in Frances and avocations to which, as a wife and a Sheridan’s biography: her husband, mother, she was more particularly called to Thomas Sheridan (1719?-1788), the actor attend. But on a reverse of circumstances, turned stage manager, elocutionist, and she could not but have felt pleasure on educator; and her son, Richard Brinsley. finding the riches and resources of her Both men merit study in a biography of mind readily acknowledged and justly Frances Sheridan, but it often seems that appreciated by Mr. Richardson,...’ (87) Lefanu is more interested in defending Thomas and Richard Brinsley from their This statement is disingenuous, as Lefanu many detractors than she is in exploring knew. Young Frances Chamberlaine had their relationships with Frances Sheridan caught the attention of Thomas Sheridan or their impact on her authorship. by publishing verses and a pamphlet Occasionally Lefanu acknowledges that in his defines during a Dublin theatre she is straying from her subject; after an controversy in 1743—publications that extended discussion of Thomas Sheridan’s Title page from Alicia led to their courtship and marriage (22-25; interactions with David Garrick (99-108), Lefanu’s Memoirs of the 29-30). She had completed her first novel, Life and Writings of Mrs. Eugenia and Adelaide, at age fifteen (7), Lefanu writes, ‘To return to the literary Frances Sheridan
6 The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 and decades later she was still confident enough libraries….’ (July 1824, page 258) The Gentleman’s about her work to show it to Richardson, who Magazine was blunt: ‘Her Sidney Biddulph is a read it and encouraged her to write more (86-7, well-written novel, but of very vexatious operation 110). Frances Sheridan was an aspiring writer with upon the nerves of readers….The hero is a dupe, ambitions of a literary career from her youth, not a the heroine a victim….Both the sufferers are, matron who suddenly turned to authorship to save however, honourable and conscientious people; her family. and it is a real mortification when the unworthy thrive by means of such virtues. Sidney Biddulph As Lefanu uses female conduct codes to reinscribe is not, therefore, to us a pleasant novel; and though the motives for Frances Sheridan’s authorship, the unpleasant ones may be good medicine, yet so too she alters the shape of her grandmother’s who likes taking physic?’ (533-34) career.1 Lefanu presents an extended summary of The Memoirs of Sidney Biddulph, the moral Sheridan’s other writings were glancingly novel that first brought Sheridan fame, and her mentioned or ignored, as the Sheridan men comments on the novel and its reception history attracted the attention of the reviewers. The overshadow the rest of Sheridan’s career (110-94, Monthly Review declared that Frances Sheridan 297-300). Arguably the emphasis on Biddulph was remembered in 1824 only as the mother of is reasonable, given its international reputation Richard Brinsley Sheridan—and The Memoirs and the ever-growing audience for novels since fail to provide new information about him: ‘… the 1760s. But the brevity of Lefanu’s remarks on the name and the promise emphatically given in The Discovery (215-229)—and her perfunctory the title-page awakened some agreeable hopes of comments on The Dupe (235-238), the sequel to new and curious anecdote relative to that highly- Biddulph (290-294), Nourjahad (294-296), and gifted genius. We were disappointed.’ (259) The A Trip to Bath (301)—reveals Lefanu’s desire to Literary Chronicle, unusual for its comments on set an agenda regarding her grandmother’s work, all of Sheridan’s works, made the case that Lefanu rather than reflecting her audience’s knowledge was duty-bound to write The Memoirs for the or interest. For Lefanu, Biddulph links Sheridan’s sake of Richard Brinsley Sheridan: ‘…this work domestic and professional lives, and in doing so, as an imperative duty which Miss Lefanu owed, if justifies female authorship. Lefanu writes, ‘A mind not to her grandmother, at least to her uncle, to like Mrs. Sheridan’s must have been particularly vindicate his character from the misstatements susceptible of maternal claims. In ‘Sidney and insinuations of his biographers.’ (March 1824, Biddulph,’ she may be here supposed to give a page 177) After discussing Frances Sheridan’s transcript of her own feelings.’ (49) As a novel of early years and Sidney Biddulph, The Gentleman’s the triumph of virtue in distress, Sidney Biddulph Magazine reflected upon Thomas Sheridan’s career reinforces Frances Sheridan’s idealized character, and his relationships with Johnson and Siddons, as the virtuous domestic woman creates virtuous while noting in passing, ‘we should have liked to art—but it does so at the expense of Sheridan’s see more of Richard Brinsley Sheridan…’ (534) As other works and her status as an artist. The New Annual Register summarized: ‘Wife and mother of two celebrated men, herself possessed of The reviews of Memoirs of the Life and Writings more than ordinary talent, Mrs. Sheridan certainly of Mrs. Frances Sheridan reflect Lefanu’s shaping deserved some record of her memory; though her of the family legacy strongly, and in ways that she life, like that of most other women, passed in the may not have fully anticipated. While Frances same round of domestic duties and with little or Sheridan’s literary career elicited respect, it did nothing of adventure, is most interesting from its not engage the reviewers’ interest. Sheridan was relation with the lives of others.’ (10; emphasis deemed a ‘superior authoress’ (The Gentleman’s added) Magazine, June 1824, page 533) and ‘an able Novelist’ ‘possessed of more than ordinary talent.’ Lefanu’s Memoirs illustrates many of the (The New Annual Register, January 1824, page 10) conventions and expectations of female biography But Sidney Biddulph was dated. As The Monthly in the early 19th century, and the challenges of Review remarked, ‘Altogether, Sidney Biddulph, writing a biography of an ancestor in an acclaimed though not likely to regain her former popularity, or family. Ultimately Lefanu reveals little about how to resist the setting in of so many new tides of taste Frances Sheridan managed her family and her and new modes of composition as have prevailed career simultaneously, but her sources provide since her days, is justly intitled a place in our useful information, as the Chawton House Library facsimile edition (2012) makes evident. There is a 1 For a more detailed analysis of the effects of gender need for a modern biography that retains its focus expectations on the representation of Sheridan’s on Frances. But until such a biography of Frances character and career, see Anna M. Fitzer’s ‘Relating Sheridan is written, Lefanu’s Memoirs remains a Life: Alicia LeFanu’s Memoirs of the Life and our best source, for with all its shortcomings— Writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan,’ Women’s Writing, or perhaps because of those shortcomings—it Volume 15 #1, pp. 32-54. My reading emphasizes the displacement of Frances Sheridan in The Memoirs illuminates the frameworks that shaped Frances more strongly than Fitzer’s, but I concur with much of Sheridan’s career and her legacy. her analysis.
The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 7 HAPPY ENDINGS, OR, THE IMPORTANCE OF FIRST EDITIONS
By Gemma Betros, Australian National University, might compel her to marry a rival French suitor, Visiting Fellow in June 2012 he laments, ‘Ah! I will never be happy, either with or without her!’ Readers are left to imagine for Everyone likes a happy ending. It makes all themselves what might happen next. the troubles that precede it worthwhile. It also reassures us that happy endings are meant to be. Why this abrupt ending? Adèle de Sénange is a We compare problems in novels with those in our two-volume epistolary novel, and three letters in own lives, and add their resolution to our database the second volume of the Library’s copy had been of evidence that all will work out in the end. One replaced inadvertently with letters from the first. novel I read during my Visiting Fellowship at Had the last letters of the novel been omitted in Chawton House Library however turned up an another printing mistake? The 1798 edition held in unexpectedly unhappy ending. Adèle de Sénange, the Library showed that my memory wasn’t at fault: ou lettres de Lord Sydenham, published in French it contains two extra letters in which the couple in London in 1794, was the first novel of French finally marry, and ends with Sydenham exhorting author Adélaïde de Souza (1761-1836). Married his correspondent to rejoice in his happiness. The to an elderly aristocrat, Madame de Flahaut—as 1821 edition, ‘reviewed, corrected, augmented, she was then known—had emigrated to London in and printed under the eyes of the author’ as part of October 1792. Her husband had been imprisoned de Souza’s collected works, likewise continues to soon after her departure and she sought to provide this happy ending. for herself and her young son, the unacknowledged child of the notorious Copies of the 1794 edition in the Talleyrand, through her writing. Cambridge University Library and the British Library however bear the Adèle de Sénange is a story of young unresolved ending, which would seem love and its requisite obstacles, set in to rule out a printing error...or provide old regime France. It was an instant evidence of a rather serious one. success in Britain: the author’s friends Further evidence of the prevalence promoted the book, while the novel’s of this ending comes from Isabelle British hero and the culture he stood de Charrière’s novel Trois Femmes for held particular appeal for a society (1795-96) in which the characters again at war with its rival across the read Adèle de Sénange, ‘a charming Channel.1 Its success soon spread. new book’ that ‘everyone has read Adèle de Sénange looked back to [and] everyone has admired’. One a gentler time secured by a known Portrait by Adelaide Labille- character is particularly ‘struck by moral, social, and political framework, Guiard, of the Comtesse de the last line: I can live happily neither offering a respite from the upheaval of Flahaut and her son. with nor without her’ (the French the present. In France, where it was here deviates from the original).3 finally published in 1798, it reportedly sold 300 Scholar Brigitte Louichon states that de Charrière copies in a single week.2 Translated into German, has ‘somewhat distorted’ de Souza’s text, as this Italian, Swedish and Danish, it appeared in over sentence, ‘announced as the last, is not in reality twelve editions during the author’s lifetime. the last of the novel’.4 Yet the 1794 editions I consulted seemed to suggest otherwise. I had first read Adèle de Sénange in a modern reprint, and remembered it ending with Adèle’s An unhappy ending is not implausible. In de Souza’s marriage to the handsome Lord Sydenham. Yet at 1811 novel, Eugénie et Mathilde, the heroine dies Chawton House Library, reading the first edition of consumption, having renounced the love of her of 1794, I turned a page to find the word ‘FIN’… life in order to maintain her religious vows. More before the (still unhappy) couple had made it significantly, de Souza finished Adèle de Sénange down the aisle. As Adèle withdraws to a convent shortly after her husband’s execution in October following the death of her elderly first husband, the 1793.5 With few financial resources, and no end hero is left in despair. Fearing that Adèle’s mother 3 Cited in Brigitte Louichon, ‘Lire Adèle de Sénange de 1 Kirsty Carpenter, The Novels of Madame de Souza in Madame de Souza: point de vue masculin, point de vue Social and Political Perspective, ed. by Malcolm Cook féminin’, in Féminités et masculinités dans le texte and James Kearns, French Studies of the Eighteenth narratif avant 1800 : La question du “gender”, ed. by and Nineteenth Centuries, 24 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), Suzan van Dijk and Madeleine van Strien-Chardonneau p. 46. (Louvain: Editions Peeters, 2002), pp. 403-15 (p. 407). [translation my own] 2 Brigitte Louichon, ‘Éditer un roman à succès (1800- 1830)’, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 14 (2002), 757-70 4 Louichon, ‘Lire Adèle de Sénange’, p. 409, n. 15. (p. 765). 5 Carpenter, p. 41.
8 The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 in sight to the Terror, Therese Huber, who an unresolved ending moved to Switzerland may have seemed not long before de better suited to the Souza, played a role times and closer to the in the new ending. intention, expressed in Katherine Astbury has the book’s preface, to revealed how, working reflect the details of life on a translation of one of as it was actually lived. Isabelle de Charrière’s The continuing rivalry novels in 1794, Huber between Sydenham and requested and received his French adversary permission from the may, in addition, have author to continue the alluded to another narrative. De Charrière ongoing challenge; had originally left a one with considerably number of loose ends— higher stakes. perhaps, suggests Astbury, a reflection If this was the author’s of the uncertainty of intended ending, the period—but was why and when was it under pressure from changed? De Souza’s her publisher to resolve movements as an these by continuing émigré may provide the story.8 Could further clues. In something similar have 1794 she left London happened with Adèle for the Swiss town de Sénange? of Bremgarten and in 1795 moved to Final page of the 1794 CHL edition of the novel Adele de Senange Whatever the case, Hamburg. Could the the different endings author, again struggling seem until now to financially, have hoped have passed unnoticed to increase sales of future editions through a more by scholars of de Souza’s work.9 Yet the original rewarding ending? There is evidence that François 1794 edition, with its unresolved ending, deserves de Pange, who briefly set up a press for émigrés attention, not least because it was in this initial in the Swiss town of La Neuveville, considered incarnation that the novel met with such acclaim. publishing a second edition of Adèle de Sénange in Adèle de Sénange has been dismissed too often 1794, 6although there seem to be no extant copies as a sentimental novel that shut out the events of such an edition. There were soon, however, four holding Europe in thrall. Returning to the first new editions published in 1795 (Tübingen, Cotta), edition suggests that a more subtle reading is 1796 (Hamburg, Hoffmann), and 1797 (Hamburg, required. Exploring how Adèle de Sénange was B.G. Hoffmann and, in Italian translation, Berlin, published and read across Europe will further help August Mylius). While I have not yet been able to us understand what made this particular work a consult the 1795 and 1796 volumes, by the time transnational success. of the two 1797 editions, the new ending was in place, although the texts differ slightly. The Italian translation also features a bewildering array of minor changes, which raises another possibility: could the modifications have been the work of a translator? 8 Katherine Astbury, ‘Translating the revolution: Therese Although the 1796 and 1797 Hamburg editions Huber and Isabelle de Charrière’s Lettres trouvées were in French, the 1795 edition was a German dans des portes-feuilles d’émigrés’, in Translators, translation by Therese Huber (1764-1829) Interpreters, Mediators. Women Writers 1799-1900, publishing under the name of her husband, Ludwig ed. by Gillian Dow, ed. by Peter Collier, European 7 Connections 25 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 99-110 Ferdinand Huber. It is tempting to wonder if (p. 101). 9 See for example Carpenter, Louichon ‘Lire Adèle de 6 Comtesse Jean de Pange, ‘Comment fut imprimé le Sénange’, Raymond Trousson, Romans de femmes premier écrit politique de Mme de Stäel’, Le Gaulois, du XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2000), pp. 15 June 1924, Le Gaulois du Dimanche, Supplément 555-66, Madame de Souza, Adèle de Sénange, ed. by littéraire, p. 3. Alix S. Deguise (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1995), 7 Helene M. Kastinger Riley, ‘Therese Huber’, in An pp. vii-xxvii, and Joan Hinde Stewart, Gynographs. Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers. Volume French novels by women of the late eighteenth century One, A-K, ed. by Katharina M. Wilson (New York: (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, Garland, 1991), pp. 573-74 (p. 574). 1993), pp. 152-70.
The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 9 ELIZABETH HARTLEY AND THE FALL OF ROSAMOND AT CHAWTON HOUSE LIBRARY
By Alicia Kerfoot, The The Penitent of Godstow College at Brockport, State (1812). This is not University of New York, necessarily surprising, since a Chawton Visiting Fellow the tale of Rosamond was in June 2012. popular material far before the eighteenth century. In the introduction to his In his article on Addison’s Henry the Second; or, The Rosamond. An Opera Fall of Rosamond (1773) (1707), Brean Hammond Thomas Hull claims that notes that romantic the actress Elizabeth accounts of Rosamond Hartley (1750/51–1824) ‘were embroidered over was the ideal Rosamond a long period of time by Clifford. Rosamond was the the early chroniclers, and mistress of Henry II, whom they had reached their legend says he kept in a final shape by the early bower at Woodstock and seventeenth century’.2 No buried in nearby Godstow matter the format, authors Nunnery after Queen struggle to reconcile Eleanor murdered her. Hull Rosamond’s beauty, piety, claims that he decided to and her sexuality. adapt Rosamond’s story for the stage when Elizabeth Thomas Hull’s Rosamond Hartley appeared on the expresses her conflicted Chamberlin, Mason the elder (attributed to) 1727-1787 Covent Garden scene: Portrait of a Lady, probably Elizabeth Hartley. Copyright: love for Henry and her Chawton House Library. desire to retire to a convent The happy Suitability rather than continue as [...] of her Figure, to the Henry’s mistress. Her transformation from virtuous Description of Rosamond (as may be found in Dr. daughter, to passionate lover, and back to virtuous Percy’s [...] Collection of old Ballads [...]) assisted (and now penitent) daughter emphasises her by the Softness and Gentleness of her Demean- ability to navigate the relationship between body our, encouraged me [...] to make the Attempt; and soul. Lord Clifford complains of her initial and the universal Aprobation given by the Pub- transformation: lic to her Appearance, Manner and Performance, on the first Representation of this Play, happily In vain her modest Grace and Diffidence convinced me I was not singular in my Opinion.1 Bore the dear Semblance of her Mother’s Sweet- ness, I stumbled across this description of Elizabeth And promis’d an unsullied Length of Days. Hartley while researching accounts of Rosamond She’s lost, and the bright Glories of our Line at Chawton House Library last summer. I sat in Are stain’d in her Disgrace.3 the reading room with a copy of the third edition of Hull’s play before me, while downstairs in the Rosamond returns to the role of virtuous daughter Great Room there hung a portrait of the very when she agrees to retire to the nearby convent, Elizabeth Hartley that Hull praises. Rosamond but then becomes saint-like when she acts as an Clifford, her great beauty, her penitence, and her agent of repentance for the murderous Eleanor, legend seemed to permeate the space of the library who decides to enter a convent herself when she in that moment: not only because I could compare understands that her actions show ‘the Faults she Hull’s description of the actress as Rosamond with meant to punish slight, | Compar’d to her, and her the artist’s depiction of Hartley in the portrait, atrocious Crimes’.4 but also because Rosamond appears in so many other materials in the Chawton House Library Elizabeth Helme’s 1812 novel insinuates that collections. For example, the library holds Francis Rosamond’s private repentance is of more worth Grose’s Antiquities of England and Wales (which than any residence in a nunnery; in this tale, contains a plate of Godstow Nunnery) as well as Rosamond is held against her will in a French Elizabeth Helme’s historical novel, Magdalen; or, 2 Brean Hammond, ‘Joseph Addison’s Opera Rosamond: Britishness in the Early Eighteenth Century’, ELH, 73 1 Thomas Hull, Henry the Second; or, The Fall of (2006), 601-629 (p. 609). Rosamond. The Third Edition. (London: Printed for John Bell, near Exeter-Exchange, Strand, and C. 3 Hull, p. 4. Etherington, at York, 1774), p. iii. 4 Hull, p. 74.
10 The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 convent. She explains to Hartley embodies another two novices: ‘My good girls, transformation of the your innocence misleads legendary penitent. As an you; the fairest bodies actress, she successfully do not always contain affects her audience in the the purest minds—this role of Rosamond because unhappy form hath she, too, must be both wrought my destruction’.5 mistress and saint when Rosamond argues that the she displays herself on stain is beauty itself, and the Covent Garden stage the answer is not a bodily for the consumption of an one, but one of individual admiring public. Indeed, repentance; however, her others construct her as an attempt to dismantle the object of transformation alignment of bodily image and sentiment, just as with purity of mind does Godstow Nunnery, Oxfordshire from Francis Grose, The the figure of Rosamond not necessarily succeed, Antiquities of England and Wales (1773-1776). Courtesy of was re-imagined. The Chawton House Library. since her spiritual identity number of narratives that relies on the suffering that Chawton House Library her bodily beauty brings her. Rosamond cannot be alone contains of both Rosamond and Elizabeth one thing or the other: she must be both mistress Hartley suggests that part of what makes them both and penitent in this account. attractive figures is their ability to complicate the very categories of identity that they were meant to Perhaps it is the ease with which Rosamond can reinforce. I believe that it is this lack of distinction be mistress, nun, and saint in this legend that between the body of the actress, the mistress, and makes the tale so popular, and perhaps it is also the penitent nun or saint that was so attractive to this transformative power that audiences saw in those who watched Hartley perform as Rosamond Elizabeth Hartley when she performed the role of in 1774 and which continues to be intriguing to Rosamond. After all, Hartley was also treading a those who read of Rosamond and view Hartley’s fine line between public perception, sympathy, and portrait at Chawton House Library today. propriety. As the Dictionary of National Biography indicates, ‘there is no record of a marriage to Hartley, and Mrs Hartley resumed her family Bibliography: name of White on her retirement from the stage 6 in 1780’. In an account of a 1774 performance of ‘An Account of HENRY II. or the FALL of ROSAMOND, the play, The London Chronicle claims that Hull a new TRAGEDY, performed last Night at Covent was vindicated in his belief that Hartley was the Garden Theatre’, The London Chronicle, 11-13 perfect Rosamond: January 1774, pp. 47-48, in 17th-18th Century Burney Collection
The Female Spectator Vol. 17 No. 1 Winter 2013 11 DATES FOR YOUR DIARY
Evening Lecture: Thursday 28th February – 6.30 pm Pride and Prejudices: Women’s Writing of the Long Dr Abigail Williams - ‘The Cheerful Companion’: Uncovering Eighteenth Century a Lost History of Popular Reading in the Eighteenth Century. A conference to be held at Chawton House Library: 4th – The lecture will explore the varied world of eighteenth century 6th July 2013. For further information about the conference poetic miscellanies, popular collections of verse, prose and please visit the website: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/ music that were the main way in which many ordinary people scecs/newsandevents/conferences/womens_writing.html consumed literature in the eighteenth century. Registration fees can be paid at: www.chawtonhouse.org in the online shop. Evening Lecture: Thursday 14th March - 6.30 pm Christina Koning - ‘Variable Stars’ The life of Christina Herschel. Christina Koning’s most recent novel, Variable Stars is about the eighteenth century astronomer, Caroline Herschel All evening lectures begin with a wine reception and canapés (16 March 1750 – 9 January 1848) who was a German-British at 6:30 and the lectures begin at 7 pm. Tickets: £10.00 (£7.50 astronomer and the sister of astronomer Sir William Herschel for Friends and students). Tickets for other events may be with whom she worked throughout both of their careers. priced differently.
Evening Lecture: Thursday 18th April - 6.30 pm To book tickets for any of the above events please telephone: 01420-541010 or email [email protected] Tickets may also Simon Langton – Filming ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and Other be booked via the website: www.chawtonhouse.org Costume Dramas To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Information about all events at Chawton House Library can Pride and Prejudice, Simon Langton will discuss directing be found on the CHL website calendar. the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle in 1995, for which he was nominated for a BAFTA.
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